Grooming gang survivors have warned the national inquiry into the scandal could be expanded to cover "other elements" of child sexual exploitation, adding to fears that the investigation could be diluted.
The Government is consulting a panel of survivors before it officially appoints an inquiry chair and determines its terms of reference.
The panel is being managed by an independent charity that has been tasked by the Home Office to gather victims' perspectives.
But one has said that they do not approve of the process being “survivor-led,” adding that the Government should already know what the problems are after Baroness Louise Casey’s audit of the crisis earlier this year.
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They said that they worried that by labelling the process "survivor-led", it would make it harder for decisions to be challenged politically.
"I was a big supporter of this inquiry being survivor-led, but recent experiences have made me question that position," they told GB News.
"I feel that the Government has already made their minds up about certain things and they will use the excuse that they’ve consulted with survivors to enforce their decisions, even though it won’t represent the majority of survivors’ opinions.”
They also said they were worried about the scope and model of the inquiry.
“A lot of politicians appear to be trying to expand the scope of this inquiry, both in relation to the type of abuse it looks at and also how the inquiry would work, such as looking at full regions rather than localities with higher levels of failings,” the survivor said.
Shabana Mahmood's Home Office insisted that it 'will do everything in our power to ensure these crimes never happen again'
|GETTY
Earlier this month, West Yorkshire’s Police and crime commissioner said the inquiry should look at the whole region rather than focusing on Bradford.
This intervention came after Bradford Council’s Safeguarding Children Partnership had previously said that a new inquiry was “unlikely to provide us with any new learnings.”
Bradford Council’s Labour leadership was then accused of a U-turn after it said in July that the authority had “nothing to hide” and would cooperate with the national inquiry after it was announced by Keir Starmer.
The survivor warned that the expansion of the inquiry beyond grooming and into wider areas would “majorly water down” the process and “push the grooming gang scandal to the backburner, avoid in-depth looks into councils and avoid any kind of accountability.”
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PICTURED: Bradford City Hall. Bradford Council’s Labour leadership said it had 'nothing to hide'
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She continued: “Just like in IICSA [the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse], grooming gang victims would be forgotten about again and be left with all the same questions and no answers.”
Last month, GB News revealed that Oldham Council, which had been promised a full inquiry, was being offered a “truth project” by the Home Office.
The survivor added: “When the prospect of ‘truth projects’ is now being pushed instead of full inquiries, faith and trust in the national inquiry is rapidly depleting from survivors.”
Another survivor told GB News that the inquiry “must not be diluted or expanded” beyond its original purpose.
“We deserve answers and we deserve accountability," they said. "To protect future generations, we must confront our history and understand what went wrong and why.”
Other survivors warned that they did not want “another IICSA”.
They argued that the grooming gangs inquiry should have a much more specific and focused approach, including looking at issues of ethnicity, religion and other cultural drivers that played a part during the scandal.
GB News has identified over 50 different towns and cities which have been affected by the grooming gang pattern of offending.
Sir Keir Starmer committed to a statutory national inquiry into the scandal after he commissioned a report by Baroness Casey, who found that there were still widespread problems with how the state understood and tackled the issue.
One chapter of her report was titled “denial”.
GB News has identified over 50 different towns and cities which have endured abuse gangs
|GB NEWS
The audit, published in June, also pointed to limited data collection by police forces, local government and health authorities.
She found that ethnicity data went unrecorded altogether for two-thirds of gang abusers.
Casey found that South Asians were over-represented as offenders in group-based child sexual exploitation in three areas that had been blighted by this pattern of offending.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The abuse of children by grooming gangs is one of the most horrific crimes imaginable.
“We will do everything in our power to ensure these crimes never happen again.
“That is why we have launched a statutory inquiry - equipped with the powers and resources required to get to the truth and deliver justice for the survivors.”
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